Katie Boulter exclusive interview: 'I got to the point where I was pretty much doing nothing during the day'

(I don't understand why it says 'The Telegraph' when it seems to be a Yahoo article, but I'm just copying what came)

Source: The Telegraph

Datd: January 5, 2019

Author: Simon Briggs

URL:
https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/katie-boulter-exclusive-interview-apos-080000913.html

Katie Boulter exclusive interview: 'I got to the point where I was pretty much doing nothing during the day'
----------------------------------------------------------

For the past week, some of tennis's best-known gladiators have been crossing swords at Perth's Hopman Cup. The exhibition event - which has mixed doubles at its heart - featured four Wimbledon champions in Roger Federer, Serena Williams, Angelique Kerber and Garbine Muguruza, plus a number of emerging talents. One of them was Katie Boulter, the British No 3.

We will come to the results later, but simply to be playing in Perth is a huge achievement for Boulter. Here is a woman who, only four years ago, could barely drag herself out of bed to use the bathroom. She is a survivor of chronic fatigue syndrome: a little-understood condition that has ended many athletic careers. In the view of her mother Sue, the exhaustion was triggered by an ill-fated trip to India in December 2014, where she contracted a virus. By the early weeks of 2015, she was in a terrible state. 'I got to the point where I was pretty much doing nothing during the day,' Boulter told The Daily Telegraph. 'I was in bed. I would go for walks and that was my daily activity.

It wasn't necessarily from India that I was ill. It was a period of time over the years and it accumulated. Honestly, I think those years I got sick a lot. I just wasn't in tune with my body. It's very easy to be generic and do what everyone else does and what's expected of you. But I didn't know what my boundaries were.

It took so long because I got misdiagnosed initially. That's why it took a full year [to get back on the court] instead of maybe six months. I think at this point I am much smarter, and I choose my battles - when I push it and when I don't. And back then I would probably have gone through all barriers and kept going until I was a little bit too run down.'

 

I hate these type of articles. Make out we're just wimps because we can't get ourselves back to normal even if we're "helped" by CBT etc etc. In my extremely irritated opinion it's just another case of over training on top of an initial infection, but athletes always get covered by the press.

 

And another pic for the "typical ME sufferers in the media" album.